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posted by janrinok on Monday March 19 2018, @09:40AM   Printer-friendly
from the not-clapping-for-us dept.

Common Dreams reports

Nordic countries with strong social welfare structures fared best, as they have in previous years, on the United Nation's annual accounting of global happiness--while the United States finished in 18th place, down four spots from 2017.

Finland was ranked number one on the World Happiness Report, compiled by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. The country was joined by other Scandinavian nations--Norway, Denmark, and Iceland--in the top four, followed by Switzerland, the Netherlands, Canada, New Zealand, Sweden, and Australia.

[...] the United States finished in 18th place, down four spots from 2017.

[...] The drop followed President Donald Trump's first year in office, during which the majority of Americans reported disapproval of the country's top elected official, and hundreds of thousands protested his regressive policies on immigration, women's reproductive rights, and gun control--as well as widespread concerns that the president is blatantly profiting off his position in public office.

The past year also saw reports of America's widening wealth gap, with the average upper middle-class household holding 75 times more wealth than low-income families.

Trump's tax law, pushed through Congress despite the disapproval of 53 percent of Americans, only heightened the perception of many people that the government is intent on transferring wealth to the richest Americans while the majority live paycheck to paycheck.

The World Happiness Report ranks countries according to per capita GDP, social support, life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity, and corruption levels.

Life expectancy in the U.S. dropped for the second year in a row in 2017, with researchers suggesting that the opioid addiction epidemic and inequality are related to the decline.

Reigning political ideologies in the highest-ranking nations contrast sharply with that of the U.S., noted the researchers.

The countries in the top 10 tend to "believe that what makes people happy is solid social support systems, good public services, and even paying a significant amount in taxes for that", said [Jeffrey D. Sachs, editor of the World Happiness Report].


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  • (Score: 1, Troll) by RS3 on Monday March 19 2018, @03:33PM (3 children)

    by RS3 (6367) on Monday March 19 2018, @03:33PM (#654950)

    Truly one of the most insightful comments I've ever read here. Also, pretty much stating what should be obvious, but people seem to live in a fantasy world more and more.

    As I've stated here before, I'm very politically neutral. When I see everyone jumping on a bandwagon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwagon_effect [wikipedia.org], (or "merry-go-round" if you like) my usual reaction is to take a step back, look at everything, and try to get a big-picture view.

    I take very little stock in surveys. I don't care what the statisticians say- your tiny sample is not a predictor of true popular opinion. Elections are a great example: how many times they poll and declare a "landslide" victory before the actual election, only to find out they're very wrong. And you can certainly argue that elections are not a true representation of popular opinions, but rather the collective of those who are willing to go vote. Same with these polls. I find the questions flawed (full of assumptions) and limiting (lousy choices), too tiny a percentage of total population sampled, etc.

    And I think it's difficult to measure: I know some pretty grumpy people (none here, of course!) who seem perfectly happy to stay grumpy.

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  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 19 2018, @09:33PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 19 2018, @09:33PM (#655136)

    I don't care what the statisticians say- your tiny sample is not a predictor of true popular opinion ... too tiny a percentage of total population sampled ...

    The size of the sample relative to the size of the population has no bearing on the statistical significance of the results. The sample size affects only the margin of error, which is independent of the population size -- it depends only on the specific question being asked about the population and the number of samples.

    Usually researchers will choose a question and the desired margin of error, and then the required sample size can be determined from those alone.

    Rough example: I have a shipping container full of papayas, and I would like to know what proportion of the papayas in it are tasty. I might select 1000 papayas uniformly at random from the container, eat them all, and find that 950 of them were tasty and 50 of them were not. I can then conclude, with some confidence level, that 95% of the papayas in the entire container will be tasty.

    The problems with most surveys of people is not the sample size, but sampling bias, where particular groups of the population are systematically excluded from the sample. There are various ways this can happen. When we exclude any portion of the population we get no information about it, and if the size of that portion is significant relative to the margin of error, we can have a problem.

    Maybe I only test papayas near the front of the container. If all the non-tasty papayas are in the back (maybe the person packing it deliberately put them there) then even with a very large sample size I will miss all of them and could erroneously conclude with high confidence that 100% of the papayas in the container are tasty.

    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday March 20 2018, @02:41AM (1 child)

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 20 2018, @02:41AM (#655238) Journal

      Don't forget that pollsters can ask all the wrong questions. Consider two questions:

      "Will Trump, or Clinton make a better president?"

      The question makes it's own basic presumptions. A better question would be,

      "Are either Trump or Clinton qualified to be president?"

      Many people would have struggled to answer the first question. Few people would have had any problem answering the second question, "NO!"

      • (Score: 2) by captain normal on Wednesday March 21 2018, @12:51AM

        by captain normal (2205) on Wednesday March 21 2018, @12:51AM (#655758)

        But...but...we didn't have "none of the above" as option.

        --
        When life isn't going right, go left.